CapitaMalls Asia slated to open 6 malls in 2013

Spaces have been pre-committed at ~50%.

According to Phillip Securities, CapitaMalls Asia's operating figures from China continued to improve due to higher revenue from operating malls and higher fund and property management fees. 

4Q12 ebit from China was lower y-y mainly due to lower reval gain and lower forex gain. CMA opened 7 malls in China in the year and most of the malls have achieved committed occupancy of >82%, except for CapitaMall Rizhao which has 67% of the lease committed.

Here's more from Phillip Securities:

We expect these new malls to start contributing meaningfully in FY13. In Singapore, The Star Vista which was opened in Sept 2012 contributed positively in 4Q12.

Occupancy improved slightly from 90% in Sept 2012 to 91% currently. Higher property management fees from CMT were registered as well due to new malls opened in 2012.

CMA is targeting to open 2 malls in Singapore by end of this year – Bedok Mall and Westgate, and the spaces have been pre-committed at 65% and 50% respectively. Another 2 new malls, CapitaMall Tianfu and CapitaMall Meilicheng in Chengdu, will be opened this year, as well as CapitaMall Jinniu Phase II in Chengdu, China and one mall In Mangalore, India.

The management guided that the group had been active in acquisition over the past 2 years and will now focus more on execution of its development projects on hand, although still open to any acquisition opportunities that the mall developer may come across.

Currently its net gearing is still relatively low at around 0.3x and shall trend up to 0.43x by end-FY13 with capex projection of ~S$800mn this year.